"Doesn't Play Well with Others"

The other day I received a call from a tele-marketer hoping to sell me real estate advertising on Google. Well, nothing came of that, but our initial interaction was interesting. He asked me if I had made it into the office yet. And I said, of course - my office is at my home. So essentially I'm here all the time - unless I'm out showing houses to prospective buyers.

Now I didn't always used to work from the house. Initially, when I worked at _______ (insert name of big brokerage) I used to go into the office every day at 9 a.m. and leave at 4 p.m. Interestingly enough, I sell more real estate when I work from home than when I go into the office. Now I understand everyone has different opinions about how they motivate themselves to work and for them it helps to have people around that, for the most part, look busy.

What bothered me about an office environment - let me correct that - what bothers me to this day about every office environment I've ever been in, is that very little really is ever being done. I contend that if every person in that office did only what they were supposed to do in a day and leave, they'd be out of there by lunchtime. A lot of what goes on in an office is unproductive.

So no, I guess I don't play well with others.

I got tired of the snarky remarks behind people's backs, the forming of cliques and clubs which - if you weren't part of - you were automatically treated differently. I got tired, essentially, of being forced to be like everyone else. So that if a client walked in wanting to sell his house, we all appeared the same. All they knew was that they listed their home with a _________ (insert name of big brokerage) agent. And perhaps that is what all offices want - an army of copies of one another that sound the same and say the same (nice) things about their brokerages. Hence, the need real estate agents feel for titles, distinctions, and letters of the alphabet after their names that make no sense to the customer.

So when I moved to _______ (insert name of another big brokerage), I was determined not to work at the office. I became an at-home agent, which besides making me sound lazy, ensured that I was always thrown in with the newbies at meetings. There was an underlying theme of "I haven't seen you before, so you must be new."

That's why I'm so glad to be at Elite Properties. I think we're true individualists here. Here I can work at my own pace, we have (almost) no meetings, all clients and transactions are handled electronically - really, is there anything we can't say by email? - and there is no attempt at making me just like everyone else. In fact, I recognize most people at the company by their personalities, not just by their faces, or names.

How refreshing. For both us and our clients.